


Interim

by angeladex



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Canon Compliant, F/M, Five-shot with the very strong possibility of offshooting into another story, Gen, Introspective Tony Stark, Maybe Wandavision spoilers, Parent Tony Stark, The Blip, The five-year interim, Tony Stark Character Study, Tony/Pepper - Freeform, Tony/therapy, idk - Freeform, the snap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28982349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeladex/pseuds/angeladex
Summary: This wasn’t his fight.The part of him that wanted vengeance, like they did, that wanted justice and had hope…that part of him had shriveled away to nothing on the Benatar as they hauled ass off of Titan.He’d done gallantry, already. Being the hero. Rescuing the wizard.It had earned him a plea for deliverance that haunted him, still, as well as the memory of a sort of ash that didn’t even linger…just dissolved into nothing; and he hadn’t even been able to bring anything back; no body, no ashes. Just nightmares.And what did he want with more of those?Exploring how we got the Tony from Infinity War, and how he transformed into the Tony from Endgame.Tony Stark came back from Titan, but he has a lot of work to do before he's really okay. A lot of living to do, and a lot of things to process, since he wasn't snapped. Adheres to Canon, explores the 5-year-interim. Tony navigates how to live without feeling guilty for doing it. And how to find Rest.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Kudos: 1





	1. Year One

A few days after everything, after getting home and filling his lungs with Pepper Pepper Pepper, gloriously alive and breathing and hugging him so tight, like she did, Nat talked at him, and he didn’t listen. He was pretty sure he told her goodbye, but with more creative language.

This wasn’t his fight. They wanted to go out and find him. It would be like poking a bear after he’d already eaten your campsite. Why put themselves through that?

The part of him that wanted vengeance, like they did, that wanted justice and had hope…that part of him had shriveled away to nothing on the _Benatar_ as they hauled ass off of Titan.

He’d done gallantry, already. Being the hero. Rescuing the wizard.

It had earned him a plea for deliverance that haunted him, still, as well as the memory of a sort of ash that didn’t even linger…just _dissolved_ into nothing; and he hadn’t even been able to bring _anything_ back; no body, no ashes. Just nightmares. And what did he want with more of those?

* * *

A week after everything, after bedrest—delicious times of rest with Pepper always there, always beside him—he was vaguely aware of the global fallout. New faces on the news. Because the old ones were gone, or their loved ones were, and they couldn’t cope. He got quite a bit of use out of BARF.

He and Pepper talked about the wedding. And they didn’t focus on who wouldn’t be able to come, or making it a big thing, anymore.

Because they had each other.

Not everyone could say the same.

Happy was still there. And Rhodey. And Pepper.

Anyone else would just be a bonus.

* * *

A few weeks after everything, there was some news story—showed archive footage of the Avengers, and he turned it off. News was weird, still; the reporters had kind of lost their bite. “Where are the Avengers now?” was kind of a shitty story to do. Where do you think, dumbasses? In the same damn boat as everybody else.

Remaining. The remnants.

He tinkered—it’s what he did well. It allowed him, like nothing else did, these days, to just let his mind go; to rest, and finish healing. He had worked on a car, once, with his dad. And it still wasn’t finished. Dad wasn’t here, and it was too hard, somehow, to finish it without him. He was forever tinkering with it, adding new parts to the engine, saying the sound was off, replacing filters and washers and lube, repainting the exterior. Calculations, parts, tools; such things were meaningless in this state. He had been known to go without eating in this state. Textbooks called it a state of “flow.”

Pepper called it part of his grieving process.

His hands started to make an Iron Man suit without thinking, and then immediately destroyed it without thinking when he realized.

* * *

A month after everything, when he was neck-deep in plans for the impending wedding, he got a box forwarded to him by Nat, he was pretty sure. A veritable storage unit of things. Things she didn’t know what to do with and wanted help on. Things she hoped would “snap him out of his funk” so he could join the fight again.

Kinda sucked, as wedding presents went.

It just sat there, at first. Tony refused to even acknowledge the space it took up. Started living around it.

And he did remember to do that. Live.

Why would he “join the fight” with Nat? When he had so much delicious living to do?

When he had a beautiful woman to marry, and invitations to send out. A lot were sent, and Pepper was gracious and understanding when a lot were marked with ‘likely will not attend.’

They’d already talked it over, after all.

Not everyone was of a mood to celebrate, just now.

But Tony said he wouldn’t put her on hold another minute.

Maybe it was an inconvenient time. But there would never be a convenient time.

They didn’t wait.

* * *

A few months after everything, the Norwegian city of Tønsberg was officially re-named “New Asgard.” Norway had been beside themselves, or so it was told, to house once more the Gods they had worshipped for centuries. Tony found the announcement mixed in with the mail he’d foisted off on Happy when he and Pepper had returned from their Honeymoon. Thor was declared its king, the land was peopled with the remaining Asgardians and the survivors of the Sakaaran Rebellion, whatever that was, and enclosed in the announcement was a miniature of the flag design.

It was like…a sign. Well, kind of.

It was okay to move on. Thor hadn’t come to the wedding, but he had given them his blessing, if such a thing mattered to Tony.

It mostly didn’t.

Except that it was kind of cool, to think that his marriage had the blessing of the God of Thunder.

Well, it sounded cool when you said it like that, anyway.

So he and Pepper started talking about moving.

Get out. Out of the city, out of the crazy, out of the chaos. And _on_ to something new. Better. He and Pepper looked at the most serene places they could find. Lakeside mountain cabins that reminded Tony, in some, small way, of Barton’s farm.

The peace, mainly. These places; the properties, the lake, the trees—they didn’t care about “the Snap.” They didn’t care about what went on in the rest of the world. They just…kept existing.

They chose one they both liked. And that was it.

* * *

A year after everything, Pepper made him look at Nat’s box. To see if there was anything he’d want when they moved. There were notes for projects he’d forgotten about or improved on. There was another of Steve’s shields. And in a larger box, arrayed, almost cadaver-like, the remains of Vision.

He shut the box.

* * *

End Year One


	2. Year Two

A little more than a year after everything, after the house was more settled, after Pepper had stopped complaining about where things were in the kitchen, anyway, which meant that she finally liked it the way it was, she told him about the test she’d just…passed.

That was a stupid way of putting it. He’d have to work on that.

He had the compulsion to call…someone. But he couldn’t call Steve. Couldn’t call the kid. He could and did call Happy. Rhodey. Thought about calling Bruce. Nat. Tried calling Barton, even, but that didn’t work out.

But it was fine. They’d had their small-scale wedding. They could have a small-scale pregnancy.

God, Pepper was pregnant! She was doing something he’d never be able to accomplish, by growing a literal human inside her.

It was elating. It was devastating. It was fantastic. It was heartbreaking.

(Dichotomy. Of two minds. Cognitive Dissonance.)

It was completely normal, his therapist said. To reach such a momentous life-checkpoint after suffering loss of any kind.

And…everyone had.

It was…different than the wedding. It was. The wedding had been about him and Pepper and it didn’t even matter if it had _only_ been him and Pepper and a judge and _that was it_. But…

He’d… _felt_ like a father. Father-figure. Sort of. Mentor? But…now he was going to be a father for real.

 _She was making him a father. For real_.

It meant that he had so much to do. So much living. Things to plan for. To look forward to.

A kid. He was going to have a kid.

And there were so many things…he _couldn’t_ do. That he thought he’d be able to do, when this finally happened for him.

Couldn’t talk to his dad.

Couldn’t…

Couldn’t tell Peter. Kid was by all means his goddamn guinea pig, and he couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t ask him to have anything to do with this.

As much as he had been (capable of being) an authority figure to the kid, he had smoothed it away for himself by covering it with other obligations. The kid’s financer? Sponsor? Mentor? Sure. Maaayyybe teacher. (Teacher came so much with the connotation of “shape the young minds of the future” that Tony never thought of as… _him_.)

But the kid…he…he’d _had_ a great father-figure, who Tony would never dream of replacing.

But…somehow, maybe over time? Absence?

Therapy?

He’d come to realize that he had taken the role, anyway.

It was why he still felt such _guilt_ about everything.

He’d…been responsible. As the kid’s chaperone, at the least. As his field-commander.

As his goddamn parental figure.

His definition of “parent” meant, bare minimum, to keep his fucking charge _alive_.

And he’d failed.

(It was…an _oddly comforting_ consolation that May Parker had also been…Snapped. And he was still trying to process that separate set of “cognitive dissonance” feelings: He could process his feelings without her…what? Interference? What kind of an asshole was he?)

Pepper was more than understanding.

What had he done to deserve her?

She could and did talk it out at length with him. His doubts. His fears.

(How was he supposed to be a good dad, his dad hadn’t been the greatest, and the only experience he’d had in kind-of parenting someone who was actually not his kid had ended with said kid turning to literal ash in his arms, and he had no idea how to be successful at this, it wasn’t a machine he could run diagnostics on to pinpoint a flaw, it wasn’t math he could check, it wasn’t an AI he could manipulate, oh God, he was going to screw this kid up so bad and it wasn’t even born yet.)

And she always knew exactly what to say. And eventually, he would even agree with her, and set to doing what he did best; he busied himself to keep from freaking out. He worked with his hands. Worked on clearing a room for a nursery. Built a state-of-the-art crib, with AI sensors so that FRIDAY could do scans with anything and everything from body temp to vocal analysis.

He researched. In his way. (He made FRIDAY do most of the sifting and read the stuff she said wouldn’t bore him to tears or make him angry.) He figured out the statistics he was comfortable with (His dad hadn’t been the best, but Tony was still alive. Bonus points for bare minimum reached) and the statistics he was not comfortable with (SIDS, Cribside death, propensity for substance abuse was fucking hereditary) and tried to process his thoughts in a happy middle ground.

* * *

And as the months passed, he also found out how hard it was to argue with Pepper about names and baby food brands, with how huge she was getting. It seemed that she was mad at everything and everyone, and being so very, very pregnant did nothing for the banter they usually shared, because it didn’t carry an undertone of loving bickering more than murderous rage, and she found frequent reasons to banish him into his busy-ness and he had to put in protocols for FRIDAY to monitor her vitals and blood pressure because she seemed to wear a specific tendon on her forehead when she shouted that probably wasn’t healthy for _anyone_ , let alone a woman growing a person inside of her.

After the prescribed nine months, the murderous rage was…forgotten? (No. Pepper’s murderous rage tendencies were terrifying, and he had documented evidence that he would have to analyze and learn from because he was _never_ going to be responsible for inciting it _ever again_ if he could help it.) Certainly forgiven. Because then…there was a _baby_.

And…every parental instinct he’d ever felt before was…so much… _sharper_ , now. Because she was _tiny_. And she was _fragile_ , and he didn’t know how to fix her, if she broke, and he couldn’t fathom the idea of anything happening to her because _he loved her so much_.

How could you love someone _this much_?

And…how could _he_ love someone this much?

He loved Pepper. He _loved_ her. But…he had always thought, deep down, that it was…a fluke. Because Pepper was so amazing. He’d have to be a complete moron to not love her, once she was in his life. He loved her because of her, in short. And not because of him. Because…if it was left up to him, he had been under the impression for the longest time that he’d find himself…

Lacking.

But he was being proven wrong.

Because he fell in love— with Morgan, his baby, his _daughter_ — so completely, so quickly, that he was literally taken aback.

Pepper just teased him. She’d always known he had a heart. She even had proof, somewhere in one of their boxes. It shouldn’t surprise him to find out he actually knew how to _use_ it, too.

* * *

End Year Two


	3. Year Three

Two years after everything, he seemed to never stop talking. If he was talking, it meant that his baby – _his_ baby, his _daughter_ , he had a _daughter_ — was listening and learning. It meant that she was connecting with the sound and tone and timbre of his voice, and it meant she was learning words and science, even if she didn’t understand, yet. She would. He knew she would. So he brought her along with him and told her about anything and everything. He explained the science of the AI goodies he was developing, he showed her all of his machines. Took them apart to he could let her see the pieces. (At a safe distance, I hope, Tony, because she learns by putting it in her mouth.)

At Pepper’s insistence, he did “normal” stuff with her, too. He memorized “Good Night Moon,” and “Green Eggs and Ham.” He gave her baths and put lotion on her when she got diaper rash. He fed her baby food and figured out exactly where to tickle her so that she laughed the way he liked.

He had never been interested in this kind of stuff, before. The Nurturing side. The baby side.

But he was making up for lost time, it seemed.

Nothing was out of the realm of possibility for him to be interested in learning. Parenting magazines and books, child psychology, behavior analysis—he put coding into FRIDAY, when he learned important things. Like the protocols FRIDAY ran when he still had the nightmares, or the panic attacks. This was like that.

FRIDAY was learning and growing as much as any of them were. Somewhere along the line, Tony was still referred to as “Boss,” but…so was Pepper. And Morgan was, with regularity, being referred to as “Little Miss.”

It was endearing and made Tony miss JARVIS. And…it even made him miss Jarvis, a little.

And it started turning the cogs in his mind.

Because of the box he’d stored in the basement.

With the remains of Vision.

With FRIDAY developing higher functions and protocols, it was just a reminder that his AI programs were more than computers. More than robots or security systems.

They were intelligent. It was in their name.

They were capable of learning.

Who’s to say he wouldn’t be able to…repair Vision?

* * *

A little more than two years after everything, he opened communication with Wakanda, looking into their tech development; Tony found himself mentally adding upgrades to some of his own designs based on what he saw. (So did FRIDAY, he noted, when he found the new file she’d made that included upgrades he hadn’t told her to copy.)

Ramonda, the ruler, was happy to keep communication open, and to forward him information when he asked questions, but admitted that she was not the developer of the tech—that was her daughter, Shuri. A victim of the Snap.

He kept busy. He didn’t need to resurrect old ghosts. Didn’t need to ask about shield design, or the strength of Vibranium relative to thickness, and how well it integrated with other metals.

He didn’t need to, but he did.

Queen Ramonda may not have been the genius that her daughter was, but she managed to field his questions and help his progress on the new project he’d inadvertently started, after accessing a batch of files Shuri had been manipulating the day of the Snap.

Files that indicated what Tony had suspected, lately: the Mind Stone wasn’t…who Vision was. Vision was the result of overlays—Bruce, Ultron, Tony himself—and those parts of him—those protocols, those programs—would probably still be in there, even if the Mind Stone was gone.

Looking at the notes and procedure—and Shuri was fucking _brilliant_ —a part of Tony– the part he usually shoved away because it came with pointed memories he didn’t like to think about – realized how much he _missed_ having something like this; the semblance of an intellectual equal. How much he missed _the kid_. How much he missed _Bruce_.

He didn’t do…reaching out. Maybe it was the selfish side of him. Maybe it was the screwed up side of him, shaped by his father. (Stark men are strong. Stark men are iron.)

He did occasionally _get_ calls. Which was fine. He was happy to talk to Rhodey, or Nat, or even Steve. Not so happy when they insisted on talking shop. And so the conversations seemed…forced. Stilted. Tony could tell it was…draining. For them. To hold so much back in a conversation.

And so Tony knew what was happening, vaguely. He sometimes read the e-mails that Nat sent out. Knew about Barton.

In return, Tony blathered on and on about Morgan. About FRIDAY’s upgrades. About the new developments he’d progressed with, and not shared with anyone.

And Rhodey, or Nat, or even a genuinely interested Steve, a few times, would nod along, and offer genuine praise. And it meant a lot. It was…the most they could do. Given the circumstances.

When he called Bruce, on impulse, to maybe try to reconnect, the call went to voicemail.

He didn’t try again.

* * *

End Year Three


End file.
